The Sisyphus Comments

Immigration Reform – Its Simple Economics

When I woke up this morning, I turned on the television and there was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) discussing the proposed immigration and border control legislation. I would be willing to bet that Senator Reid had more than one wedgie when he was in middle school. I don’t know how a national party goes about selecting its “leaders” but it might time to reassess the process. For instance, how did they select John Boehner (R-OH) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as the minority leaders for the House of Representative and Senate respectively? Better yet, did you even know they were the leaders of the Republican party? Never mind – let me get back to the immigration issue.

Senator Reid was trying to explain why the proposed legislation, which originally granted legal status to 400,000 criminal aliens (its down to 200,000 now), is a good solution to the illegal immigration problem. By the way, according to one recent poll most Americans don’t agree with the Senator’s opinion. In fact, 48% of the respondents in a recent survey disagreed with the proposed amnesty plan while only 26% thought granting legal status to the criminal aliens who entered this illegally was a good idea. Of course the remaining 26% were probably so busy trying to guess who would win American Idol that they haven’t taken the time to form an opinion on the immigration issue. It is important to keep our priorities straight.

Proponents of the proposed legislation base their argument on two points. First they say that we do not have the resources to secure our southern border and deport all of the criminal aliens. The prevailing thought is that we will need to use a multifaceted approach to securing the border, including the construction of approximately 700 miles of fence. My opinion is the sooner we get started the sooner we will be finished. Sometimes I think people lose sight of the fact that this is the county that put men on the moon and built an interstate highway system that stretches from border to border in all directions. I am sure we could build a fence if we decided to make it a priority. In addition to stemming the flow of criminal immigrants, our new fence might even help slow down the drug traffic from Mexico. Of course we would also need to increase the number of border patrol agents and the number of electronic monitoring systems, but all of this is doable – if we make it a priority.

The second argument is that we need the labor that is provided by the criminal immigrants because the agriculture industry can’t find people to do the work. It seems to me that if you are running a business and you can’t find people to do the work, one option would be to pay higher wages. According to Diggerrealm.com, it apparently worked for Swift and Company after they lost most of their employees after an ICE raid. In fact, if the proposed legislation passes, the farmers may have an opportunity to experience the concept of unintended consequences. How long do you think these criminal immigrants will continue to work in the fields and orchards once they receive legal status. Maybe they will just be so happy to be legal that they will continue to labor at these jobs that “no one wants to do”! Of course if that doesn’t prove to be the case, I wonder where will the farmers are planning to find their replacement workers? Remember, the criminal immigrants that are in this country right now are the strongest, most able bodied of the immigrants since they had to survive tough conditions just to get here. What do you suppose the next wave of immigrants will be like?

If you are not a farmer and you are having trouble seeing how the immigration issue is going to impact you personally – think social services. Once these criminal aliens are granted legal status, they will be able to take advantage of our social services. Next, after they get settled in, surely they will want their families to join them. Of course, being the humanitarians that we are, we will be obligated to educate their children and provide for their medical care.

If you listen to Senator Reid and the other proponents of this legislation, they would like you to believe that our only options are to immediately deport all of the criminal immigrants or give them amnesty. The flaw in their argument is they are attempting to limit the options to just those two and to force an immediate decision. My question is, “What’s up with this sudden sense of urgency?” Did Senator Reid wake up one day, look at his Getting Things Done list and discover that his next action was “end the criminal immigrant problem?”

Try to look at it this way. If a water pipe burst in your basement, wouldn’t it be wiser to shut the water off before you grab a bucket start bailing the water out of basement? The same philosophy can be applied to our illegal immigration problem. Why not focus our energy and resources on securing the border to stem the flow of criminal aliens. Once we have effectively stopped the influx of illegal immigrants, we can turn our attention to identifying and deporting those who are already in our county illegally.

There is one more problem that needs to be addressed if we are truly going to get a handle on the illegal immigration problem and we can use the war on drugs as a model for the solution. We have structured our drug laws so that the dealers are punished much more severely than the users. We need to adopt a similar philosophy to stop illegal immigration. If we raise the stakes for the people that are employing illegal immigrants by aggressively prosecuting and punishing them, the economics of hiring criminal aliens will no longer make sense. As a capitalist nation, we know that when the demand dries up the supply will also eventually drop off – its simple economics.